The most incredible book to my knowledge this year...The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death - essay and photography by Corinne May Botz
Criminal investigator Frances Glessner Lee, founded Dep of Legal Medicine at Havard in 1936 and later became captain of New HampshirePolice. In the 1940's and 50's she created dollhouse crime scenes based on real cases to train new detectives. Her collection was named after the police saying, "Convict the guilty, clear the innocent, and find the truth in a nutshell."
Still used today, 18 dioramas on a scale of 1:12. This essay is the product of archival research , interviews with Lee's family and police colleagues... the author says, "I was entranced by the details: the porcelain dll witha broken arm in the attic, the grains of sugar on the kitchen floor, the fallen book with a flying witch on the cover. I was also riveted by the miniature corpses. Shot in bed, collapsed in the bathtub, hung in the attic, and stabbed in the closet: all were eternally frozen in miniature rooms that had become their tombes. Literary quotes accompany magnificently eery photographs from the interior of each dollhouse. The images are often up close, capturing one corner of a room and all the intricate detail that went into design. And beyond the small detail, the colours and interior design are wonderfully vintage and interesting in themselves.
Visit the e-portfolio of Corinne May Botz to see many of the photographs featured in the book...
http://www.bellwethergallery.com/artistsindex_01.cfm?fid=28
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